AN acute older people's ward at Otley Wharfedale Hospital is to close - as exclusively revealed in the Wharfedale Observer on December 14.

Following the agreement of the strategic health authority, the phased changes to the care of older people at the hospital will now go ahead.

They are part of the health trust's attempts to save up to £750,000 per year at Wharfedale, will see the care of older people centralised to St James's Hospital, Leeds. Additional changes to services at the Newall Carr Road hospital will see the ending of surgery requiring an overnight stay - such as hernia repairs - and an increase in the number of day surgeries.

A spokesman for the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust said: "The proposed changes to the older people's unit at Wharfedale have been agreed and will go ahead as part of a phased approach.

"We are continuing to work closely with all staff groups and are meeting with staff on a one to one basis to ensure that individual preferences are taken into consideration throughout the redeployment process."

The closure of the ward, one of two acute older people wards at Wharfedale, will mean a loss of up to 13 beds and the redeployment of around the same number of staff to other sites in Leeds.

Otley MP yesterday responded angrily to the ward closure ratified by the NHS Yorkshire and the Humber Strategic Health Authority.

Mr Mulholland, who met interim trust chief executive Hugo Mascie-Taylor before Christmas to discuss the proposals, said: "It is totally unacceptable that having told people this closure was merely a proposal before Christmas, the trust has now decided this is a done deal.

"There simply hasn't been any real consultation with local people and many staff are understandably anxious about their future.

"Once again the trust have failed to talk with staff and local people about the role of Wharfedale Hospital.

"I am demanding that they face the public and staff, giving them a genuine opportunity to air their concerns.

"It makes a mockery of the proposed consultation over this decision and certainly many people from the hospital, as well as the wider area, feel they have been duped. It is time now that the public get their say."